Pure Flip Mino HD The pocket-sized Flip camcorder was one of the top tech toys of summer 2008, and it spawned a host of equally diminutive copycat products – not to mention our own compact camcorder round-up. The secret of the Flip’s success lay in its sheer simplicity. Unlike most digital cameras and camcorders, which are festooned with buttons …
Why is it that companies produce these things when most modern phones (such as the new Samsung & LG models) can record video at 720 x 480? Not quite HD, but with the addition of stereo sound and a slight increase in resolution, that would mean one less gadget to carry around.
Comments about the above, didn’t fill me with confidence about the review – they gave the impression that the reviewer doesn’t know what’s on the market.
“The no-frills design means that it doesn’t have any of the image stabilization features found in more expensive camcorders…”
Or even ones the same price… or even cheaper. Toshiba, for instance, has just revamped its Camileo range - all of which have image stabilisation; the S10 is about the same price (though can be had for cheaper) and the other two models are less expensive. Aiptak also, has had image stabilisation on some of its offerings for a while. But Flip can be excused the lack of image stabilisation (something that many consider a fairly useful feature), because of the ‘no-frills design’ even though it’s a charging a premium price.
“The Flip Mino HD has a 2x digital zoom, which does cause a slight loss of detail in the image, but a more powerful optical zoom is probably a bit much to expect at this price.”
The Camileo P30 can be had for cheaper and has a x5 optical zoom. Sony offer a similar range, though its models are a little chunkier.
Flip cameras have had mixed scorings from El Reg – e.g. the Flip Ultra got 60% in last October’s round-up, but 80% a couple of months earlier – the score for this does seem to be a little high, given the obvious features (found in some competing models) that are missing.
For a while, it’s been common to read about ‘Flip killers’, so it was going to be interesting to see what the company was going to bring out in response – not much, for a much greater mark-up.
We are aware that Toshiba is about to update its Camileo range. However, none of the new Camileo models were available when we reviewed the Flip so it seemed unfair to compare it to products that hadn't launched yet.
We are, however, planning to review the new Camileo shortly.
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